SBD Star Rating:
by Lew Irwin
View Credits | See Other Reviews
|
 Early trade reviews of Lions for Lambs , starring Robert Redford and Tom Cruise, which premiered Monday at the London Film Festival, suggest that it is likely to face the same difficulties attracting ticket buyers as other recent films targeting the war in Iraq. Ray Bennett writes today (Wednesday) in the Hollywood Reporter: "Boxoffice response to films dealing with the U.S. government's strategies in the Middle East so far suggests that the public is not eager to grapple with the topic onscreen. Redford's film will appeal to those who feel that today's military sacrifices are being made on false premises, but its responsible tone could draw a more widely appreciative audience." In Daily Variety, Derek Elley comments that the screenwriter, Matthew Michael Carnahan, "uses a lot of words to say nothing new" and that the movie amounts to "the movie equivalent of an Off Broadway play." Noting that the film is the first for United Artists since Cruise began running the studio, Elley concludes that Lions "doesn't look likely to roar its way to significant [box-office] gains." |
|
SBD Star Rating:
by Lew Irwin
View Credits | See Other Reviews
|
 Supporters of the war in Iraq have surprisingly found most of the nation's major film critics on their side. The critics have come down heavily on the anti-war film Lions for Lambs, with many of them warning that it is fatally boring. Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times comments that it "looks like a stage play and plays like a policy debate." Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times writes that "there is a long stretch toward the beginning of the film when we're interested, under the delusion that it's going somewhere. When we begin to suspect it's going in circles, our interest flags." Says Kyle Smith in the New York Post: "I went to a wartime thriller, but then a Poli Sci 101 seminar broke out." Similarly Ann Hornaday remarks in the Washington Post: "For all its passion and topical currency, Lions for Lambs plays too often like a college colloquium, with one extended scene of a classroom debate suffering from all the sleep-inducing effects of the real thing." Looking at the movie from a Canadian perspective, Geoff Pevere in the Toronto Star writes: "A lumpy, ill-dramatized and ultimately enervating liberal Op-Ed piece flailing for dramatic purchase, this steroid-inflated Sundance workshop may prove most effective as a demonstration (as opposed to an antidote) of the political desperation that hamstrings the American middle-left." |
|
|
